Legacies
by LinariteLavanya
Summary: [An Inevitable sequel.] Davina Claire had thought that the most difficult times of her life had already passed. She'd been chased, kidnapped, killed, and resurrected, but she'd made it to the end of the nightmare, thanks to her friends and surrogate family .She'd thought that it was all over, that she could finally move on with her life. Apparently she'd been wrong.
1. Prologue

_A/N: Hello, my friends! Welcome back to the world of Inevitable! I'm so sorry to have kept you all waiting for so long, but here we are finally: the sequel to Inevitable!_

* * *

 **Prologue**

" **The most dangerous people are those who have nothing to lose."**

* * *

It was a fairly nice gravestone, as gravestones went. (If gravestones could be considered "nice" to begin with, that is.)

 _Lydia Westphall_ , it read, followed by date of birth and date of death.

And that was it.

There was no epitaph, no poetic quote etched into the stone.

No mention of the fact that Lydia Westphall had been a loving mother who'd left a son behind.

It wasn't the sort of gravestone Kaleb would have picked for her, if he'd been the one to do it.

And by rights it should've been him, but he'd been across the sea in London and hadn't even heard about his mother's death until two months ago when someone had finally thought to update the missing persons' report he'd filed.

So his mother had been buried with the barest amount of care and respect, halfway around the world from home and with no one to weep at her graveside as they'd lowered her into the cold wet earth.

(A distant part of him wondered why they'd buried her to begin with; he wasn't familiar with the Big Easy's burial practices, but a quick online search had been enough to tell him that burying someone in the ground was strange for a city built on below-water-level swampland, where one heavy rainstorm could be enough to un-bury the deceased and float the casket off to who the bloody hell knew where. Had the city of New Orleans really cared so little for the burial of a woman they'd known nothing about?)

He wanted to have someone dig her casket back up, so he could fly it back home and bury it where it should be, beside his father's at Allerton Cemetery back home, but he just couldn't afford it. He'd used the last of his savings to fly over here to America, and it had been with a larger goal in mind than simply retrieving his mother's body and bringing it home.

No, he was here to find out what had happened to her. Because he knew his mother, and he knew that she would never have just left him behind without saying anything. She'd come to this city for a business trip and hadn't come home and everyone else wrote it off as her being irresponsible, as Lydia Westphall simply growing to enamored with the New Orleans lifestyle to want to come home to her normal routine of regular office hours and credit card payments, but Kaleb knew better.

His mother wouldn't have just decided not to come home. She wouldn;t have left her whole life behind.

She wouldn't have left him behind.

He'd been suspicious of the circumstances ever since she'd first gone missing. And now...now he was positive of it, because he could sense it, at her gravesite. Just a faint hint of it...but it was there, a whiff of dark magic.

He couldn't be sure if his mother had been targeted because she'd been a witch, but that lingering taint left no doubt that magic had been involved with her demise somehow.

It was going to be up to him on his own to figure out the how, though; the coven he and his mother had belonged to back in Liverpool had refused to grant him any assistance in the matter, deeming it "not within their purview" because it was an "overseas matter".

He'd withdrawn his membership from the coven the very same day of that conversation and booked the earliest flight to the States, determined to find out what had happened to his mother. If he had to do that by himself, so be it. His mother deserved it, deserved to have the truth about her death brought to light and the ones responsible brought to justice.

He had absolutely no idea where to start, since he was in a foreign country with little in the way of money and nothing in the way of useful contacts, but still. He'd find a way. He had to.

After lingering for another moment or two at his mother's grave, he stood up and headed for the closest cemetery exit. Before he made it more than ten steps in that general direction, though, a woman stepped into his path, appearing so quickly it was almost as if she'd materialized out of the twilight gloom.

He couldn't be sure because of the fading light, but she seemed young. Not much older than he was, actually, with brown hair cropped short and pale skin like she hasn't been out in the sun much lately, and he normally wouldn't have thought much of her youthful appearance except for the sheer level of power he could sense from her.

Or rather, from _within_ her; he couldn't articulate it properly even within his own thoughts, but the magical energy he was sensing seemed to be almost a separate entity from the young woman in front of him; almost as if it was possessing her, rather than power she possessed in her own right.

"Well, well, well," she said to him, tilting her head and regarding him with a look that reminded him of cats watching canaries. "Kaleb Westphall. You've arrived earlier than I anticipated."

He tensed up automatically at a stranger using his name, a problem compounded by the fact that it was a magically powerful stranger using his name. Names were power in their own way, after all, and now he was at a notable disadvantage.

"I wasn't aware that anyone was overly invested in my comings and goings," he replied, careful of his wording and tone; it never paid to offend a powerful practicioner with rudeness.

"Oh, on the contrary," she responded, "I've been looking forward to meeting you for quite some time." Her gaze raked over him in a way that, quite frankly, made his skin crawl. It was a clinical look, as if she were assessing absolutely every facet of his being and weighing the pros and cons. "Yes, I think you're precisely what I've been looking for."

"What are you talking about?" he asked, taking an instinctive step back. "What have you been looking for? Who the bloody hell are you?"

She gave a smile that seemed sweet on the surface, even as her eyes sparkled with a dark light that spoke of unfathomable power. "What's in a name?" she quipped, her light tone belied by the intensity of her demeanor. "Who I am isn't important Or rather," she corrected, "it isn't important for you to know. You're just the means to an end, after all, you sweet boy."

Kaleb took another deliberate step back and started pulling up some of his own magic, letting it swirl within him, just under his skin. "What do you want with me?" he demanded, heart pounding.

A long, long moment of tense quiet, the silence only broken by the incongruous twittering of the birds in the trees that were settling down for the night.

"I suppose the truth won't change the outcome at this point," she said at last, and then gave another one of those smiles. "I need a vessel," she told him. "For the soul of one of my sons. And you, Kaleb Westphall, are a perfect choice."

Then she waved a slender hand, murmured an incantation, and suddenly it felt like his whole body was encased in cement; his limbs grew unbearably heavy and it was a struggle to move, to think, to _breathe_.

He tried to reach for his own magic, to fight back in some way, _any_ way, but it was like trying to catch wisps of smoke with his bare hands. He couldn't get a solid grip on his power; it kept slipping farther and farther away, like a sun dipping down below the horizon at the end of a long day.

Eventually, he couldn't even stand any longer, and he collapsed onto the cold damp ground, his vision flickering with twisting shadows. It was almost like she was trying to put him sleep, but it somehow felt like _more_.

 _She's burying my consciousness_ , he realized belatedly a few moments later, after he noticed how sluggish and muddled his own thoughts were becoming, and it made him want to scream. He would be trapped and locked away in his own body, perhaps buried so deeply that he might not even be self-aware anymore. So deeply that he might as well not even _exist_ to begin with.

Part of him couldn't help but wonder if he still _will_ exist, after she's torn him apart and shoved someone else's soul inside his body. He'd never studied the concept of magical soul transference before, but he honestly can't fathom two souls being able to reside in the same body. So will he, Kaleb, still be there? Will he still exist in _any_ capacity, other than as a mere memory to be forgotten as time marches on without him? Or is he simply being erased and replaced with this dark witch's son?

He's too terrified to really consider the probable answer.

"Who are you?" he choked out, the words like shards of glass digging into his throat at he spits them out through sheer force of will. _Who are you, that you have power to do something like this? Who are you, to think you have the_ _ **right**_ _?_

She came closer and leaned over him, her expression one of so many mixed emotions he couldn't quite name them all, not as overwhelmed as he was right then. There was amusement in the tilt of her mouth, and a triumphant gleam in her eyes, and something that could almost be some sort of reluctant sympathy but he's probably imagining that bit.

"My name," she told him, her voice a barely-there whisper like she's imparting a great and terrible secret, "is Esther Mikaelson."

* * *

 _A/N: I hope you all enjoyed the first installment of this new story, short though it may be. ;D_

 _In general, for those who want to know, this story will be mostly Davina-centric (although the twins and their continuing stories will also feature prominently along with the Mikaelsons, of course! ;D) and will also eventually feature a poly relationship (of Davina/Kol/Kaleb, since in this fic Kaleb is going to actually (eventually) have an identity beyond the guy whose boy got hijacked)._

 _Feel free to drop me a review and let me know what you thought of it; I always love getting feedback. :D_

 _Also, just so that everyone's aware, this story is currently going be updated on a monthly schedule; the next update is probably going to come either April 23rd (my birthday) or April 27th (the following Friday), but it might come sooner depending on how my writing progress in general goes. Currently I have some other obligations (a full-time retail supervisor job, one freelance client I write two articles a day for, another client I write a couple articles a week for, plus the various other Responsible Adult things like bills and appointments and taxes (and possibly school again in the near future)) that I need to juggle so I don't want to get sucked into a frequent update schedule that has me compromising quality for the sake of speed. I want to give myself enough time between updates to make sure the chapters are of good quality and all that stuff, so, yeah, updates once a month for sure, with bonus updates if I manage to get a good buffer of chapters set up._


	2. Chapter 1

_A/N: Hey, everyone! Welcome back! And sorry for the delay in updating; I meant to post this on my birthday last week, but circumstances conspired against me, lol. XD (And my internet lately has been seriously misbehaving so I've had loads of trouble getting the chapter to upload at all.)_

 _In any case, this is the first full-length chapter in Legacies, so I hope you enjoy it! It's done in Zoe's 1_ _st_ _person POV and I suppose it can essentially function as a bit of a recap chapter for the events of Inevitable and what's happened in the interim, which I understand isn't the most exciting thing in the world but it's necessary since we dive immediately into the plot starting in the next chapter. ;D Anyway, enjoy!  
_

* * *

 **Chapter 1**

" **Every moment is a fresh beginning."**

* * *

My morning started off with the smell of charred cloth and burning plastic.

"Sorry," Davina said as she hurried over to open a window and clear out the atrocious odor. "I'm sorry!"

"It's fine," I assured her, breathing through my mouth as much as possible even as I called up a flickering spark of my own magic and used it to summon a cleansing breeze. "Magical backfires are part of the learning process, it's nothing you need to apologize for."

Davina made a face, looking unconvinced. "But I don't understand what I'm doing wrong," she replied, looking frustrated. "The book makes the spell seem so simple."

"Transmutation spells can be tricky," I told her, glancing down at the blackened remains of the now-destroyed toy on the table between us; the goal of the spell had been to turn it into something else but obviously (very obviously) the magic had gone sideways. "Look," I went on, "transmutation is a notoriously difficult area of magic, with tons of theory and stuff that goes along with it. Very few practitioners ever even attempt to learn it, much less try to master it. Honestly," I added, "if you weren't so naturally gifted I wouldn't have even considered letting you try this sort of spell so early into your apprenticeship."

Davina gave a little snort of disbelief. "Gifted, sure. That's why the Bratz doll looks like someone tried to barbecue it."

I refrained from rolling my eyes, but only barely. "You did hear the part where I said that transmutation spells are ridiculously hard, right? And that very few people are insane enough to try using them?" I walked around the table and wrapped an arm around her shoulders in a loose hug. "Being gifted doesn't mean being an instant expert at everything you try, sweetie. Some things are going to take longer for you to learn, but that's not a bad thing; that's just how learning new things works."

Davina huffed out a small sigh, then gave a reluctant smile. "I guess you're right," she said at last.

"I have been know to be right on occasion," I noted wryly. "It's a rare occurrence, but it happens. Anyway," I continued, "trying to transform an old Bratz doll into a pair of stilettos might have been a _little_ ambitious for your first transmutation attempt. We can try something simpler next time, like turning a piece of wood into rock, okay?"

My apprentice wrinkled her nose but nodded. "Yeah, I guess it's better to start at the basic firsst, huh? Before attempting the more complicated stuff."

I decided to forego reminding her that I, as her much more experienced mentor, had in fact advised against skipping ahead past multiple months' worth of learning to a high level spell.

I was the adult here, after all, and since she'd seemed to grasp the general idea that rushing ahead when learning magic could result in unforseen (and usually negative) side effects, an "I told you so" would probably be both immature and redundant. (Albeit moderately satisfying.)

"You've been doing very well, Davina," I said instead. "Don't let a few setbacks get you down; it happens to everone. Now," I tacked on, glancing at my watch, "don't you have to get to school? It's almost eight."

"She definitely does," Marcel said, zooming into the room with vampire speed, Davina's backpack in one hand and his car keys in the other. "Come on, D, let's get going."

"Aw, but Marcel-"

"No buts, Davina; you can't blow off school to study magic. We talked about this, remember? When you first told me that you wanted to go back to school, we agreed that you needed to balance your responsibilities."

"I know, I know." She took her backpack from him and slung it over her shoulder. "But I really want to learn transmutation and I just-"

"Have an AP Chemistry test that you're trying to avoid?" Marcel asked dryly.

Davina, in true teenage form, rolled her eyes at her guardian. "I'm not trying to avoid it, I just don't want to take it."

I frowned a bit and tilted my head as I considered her. "Is there a difference between the two?" I asked in amusement.

"Of course," Davina said immediately, while Marcel just shrugged in a what-can-you-do sort of way. "It's not like I'm not ready for it," the young witch went on. "I studied all weekend and everything. But I feel like learning transmutation is important, too, and maybe if I just study it a little bit more right now-"

"Nope," was Marcel's immediate response. "Your first class starts in half an hour, and it's a twenty minute drive to get there in good traffic; more magic is going to have to wait until you come home this afternoon, okay?"

Davina grumbled a bit under her breath but finally relented. "Alright, fine. School now, more magic later." She darted forward to give me a quick hug and then left the room, humming some sort of jazz song under her breath as she went.

I was torn between being unhappy at Davina's departure because it deprived me of my eager-to-learn apprentice, happy for her because despite her occasional bouts of teenage complaining she did genuinely enjoy school, and relieved that I'd have until later today before I had to scrounge up both a proper trasmutation lesson plan and enough of my own energy to implement it. Because as much as I loved teaching her, containing the negative energy from her failed transmutation attempt had used more energy than I'd anticipated and I did not want a repeat performance.

In normal circumstances, I could have contained it all and barely even noticed a dip in my energy reserves, but I was still recovering my own power after being freed from Reginald's control; it had been almost a year since I'd broken the spell he'd used to bind me to him and yet I was still struggling to regain my previous power levels.

It had been worth it, though; even losing my magic altogether would have been an acceptable price to pay to get away from my uncle, especially since he'd taken great delight in controlling my every action and turning me into a glorified attack dog.

Luckily, I'd gotten away from him thanks to my loved ones, and my magic was still intact; I just needed to build my base power level back up again, like when an injured athlete had to get their muscle strength back after a long convalescence.

And not only did I still have my own power, but I could now help Davina learn how to control hers. Because even though she was no longer channeling the impossible power gained from the Harvest ritual, she was still one of the strongest witches New Orleans had ever seen and that kind of sheer power needed guidance.

I still wasn't entirely sure if I was the best person for the job, but I was damn well going to try my best.

"Hey, Zoe," Marcel said suddenly, hesitating just before he left the room and followed Davina downstairs. "I know I don't say it as often as I probably should but, uh...thanks. For helping Davina like this. These magical tutoring sessions or whatever the hell you wanna call them...they mean a lot to her, and I think she's really getting better at controlling her magic."

"You don't need to thank me," I told him, shaking my head. "Tutoring Davina is the very least I could do, all things considered." Even ignoring my own personal attachment to the teenager (an attachment that was, admittedly, considerable), Davina had a lot of power lurking inside of her; she needed to be trained in how to use it safely, for both her own welfare and that of everyone else in the world.

"Even so," Marcel replied, "I appreciate you looking out for her. It's good to know that she's got someone like you in her corner. Anyway, see you later; I've got to drop Davina off quick if she's going to make it to her first class on time."

"Alright," I said, waving one hand in farewell even as I returned most of my attention back to the blackened work table and the twisted hunk of plastic on top of it. "See you later. Drive safe and all that."

"Sure thing," he said with a chuckle, and then he was gone, zooming away with vampire speed; a few seconds later I heard a car door slam outside and then the telltale sound of an engine starting up and then growing fainter as the car drove away, presumably in the direction of Davina's private school.

It was, all in all, a pretty normal morning at the Abattoir. And wasn't that just the weirdest thing of all.

It didn't seem like so long ago that my brother and I had first been pulling into New Orleans, had first been dragged into the roiling supernatural drama that the city had practically been drowning in back then.

Back when we'd first gotten involved with the Mikaelsons.

Now, instead of being eternally on the run with our psychotic and power-hungry uncle chasing us, we had a home. A real home, with people we cared about, people who cared about us in return.

People who loved us.

Hell's bells, I was _married_.

To the most handsome vampire on the face of the planet, no less.

Elijah Mikaelson, eldest living Mikaelson sibling (if the term 'living' could be applied to the living-dead race that are the vampires, at any rate). We had fallen in love, and although the road to where we were now had been tough and terrifying at times (to the point where I still woke up screaming some nights when the shadows of the past caught up with me in my sleep), I couldn't be anything other than grateful.

And not just for myself; my brother was the happiest he'd ever been in his entire life. He had Rebekah, who was his soulmate and better half just the way Elijah was for me, and he had Klaus, who was not only our Alpha and brother-in-law but also my brother's best friend. The sort of best friend who could just as easily shoot pool with you as help you decapitate some nasty necromancy-obsessed warlocks, but that's pretty par for the course for our oddball little family unit.

And the Mikaelsons themselves were happy, too, something that they had admittedly thought to never have again; even Klaus, who'd been struggling his entire life, fighting for a place to fit in and for a family that cared for him unconditionally, was...content.

We were all still struggling with our own personal demons, but it was a struggle we endured together, as a family. And that made it just about perfect.

I knew that the idyllic peace couldn't last forever; I wasn't that naive. But for now..for now, I was happy. I had a husband I was head over heels in love with, I had my brother by my side, and I had some pretty damn great friends. I even had an apprentice in Davina, and while it wasn't originally an arrangement I would've anticipated, it was one that seemed to be beneficial for the both of us.

And after all we'd been through already, I knew that any threat to the life we'd built for ourselves here would be faced together and met head-on, with fire and fury and an abundance of blades and attack magic.

Because we were a family, right on down from me and Elijah, to Ezra and Rebekah, to Klaus and Cami who were taking their time in the courtship stage, to Marcel and Sophie who were fond of each other but working through a veritable mountain of issues, to Davina, the young witch who'd died and come back and who was trying so hard to find her own place in the world

We were a family.

Not an average family by any stretch of the imagination, but who wants average anyway?

* * *

 _A/N: Okay, so that's the first chapter! If you have a second to spare, drop me a review and let me know what you think of the story so far; I adore feedback. :) Anyway, I'll have the next chapter posted within a month; there's a chance that'll I'll post it next week or the week after if I get some more buffer chapters cranked out, but barring that it'll be posted by the end of May for sure! Promise. ;)_


	3. Chapter 2

_A/N: Welcome back, everybody! Thank you so much for your patience with my slower update schedule lately, and a huge thanks as well for all the great feedback I've gotten so far! I'm glad that so many people are still excited for this story!_

 _In any case, this chapter ended up being both longer than originally planned and not at all what I initially had in mind? I mean, it's not unusual for the characters in my stories to take the reins and lead events in directions I didn't anticipate, but normally not so soon, lol. XD But as it stands now, this chapter is half Davina going to school, and half Kol waking up in Kaleb's body. So, hooray for Kol making his debut into the story! I'm so excited! But I do also feel obligated to mention that I struggled a bit with this chapter for some reason, so if bits of it don't seem to flow right, that's probably why. XD_

* * *

 **Chapter 2**

" **There will come a time when you believe everything is finished** **. That** **will be the beginning** **."**

* * *

"Alright," Marcel said as they pulled up to the drop-off zone of Isidore Newman School. "Here we are." He twisted around in the driver's seat to look at her more directly. "Have a good day in class, D. And don't forget, you have a session with Cami this evening, okay?"

Davina's felt her smile falter at the reminder. She knew that her talks with Cami were important, knew _logically_ that talking about the events of a year ago and working through her feelings about all of it was helping her...but on some days it just felt painful and lonely, reliving those old horrors. "Is that today?" she asked quietly. "I'd forgotten all about it."

Marcel gave a gusty sigh and reached over to squeeze her shoulder gently. "I know it's hard on you," he said comfortingly. "But it's for your own good, Davina, you know that."

She almost opened her mouth to shoot back that her death had supposedly been for her own good, too, but she bit down on the words before they could escape; if she said that it would just hurt her and hurt Marcel, and they'd both been hurt enough already.

So instead she just nodded and forced a smile back onto her face. "Same meeting place as before, right? Her uncle's church?" Davina didn't know why, but she still found the place oddly comforting and preferred doing her therapy sessions there rather than at the Abattoir or some rented office space; although some might consider her time hiding there as being not much better than being held prisoner, to Davina that church still meant safety, still reminded her that Marcel cared about her enough to fight a war on multiple fronts to protect her.

She often needed that sort of reminder, whenever she spoke to Cami about the events of the Harvest and everything that had come after, up to and including her own death at the hands of a possessed Shadow Coven witch who'd been working for the Storme twins' insane immortal uncle.

 _But that's all over now_ , she told herself firmly, shaking her head and forcing herself to focus on the here and now. _I'm not dead anymore, the Ancestors aren't trying to hurt me, I'm alive and moving forward with my life. Everything's fine. It's all over and finished._

"Yeah," Marcel was saying as she tuned back in to the present world. "St. Anne's, seven o'clock tonight. Do you want me to come pick you up after, or will you be getting a ride from Cami, or...?"

"Uh, no, that's okay," she said. "I'll walk back to the compound on my own, if that's alright. We're going to be talking about the time I was...the time I spent with the Ancestors," she said, voice cracking only a little. "I think...I think I'll need to be by myself for a little while after that."

Marcel looked an awful lot like someone had just carved out a chunk of his heart and stepped on it, but he visibly swallowed down his pain and grief and nodded. "Okay," he answered, and if his voice was a little choked up too, well, Davina wasn't going to point it out. "Okay, but you be careful, alright? If you get any weird feelings or see anyone who looks suspicious, make sure that you-"

"Call you right away and get to somewhere safe where lots of people can see me," she repeated dutifully, the words rolling off her tongue with well-practiced ease. "You don't need to worry so much, Marcel," she added. "I can take care of myself."

Marcel just gave her a strained smile and pulled her into a loose hug before releasing her and hitting a button to unlock the car doors. "I hate to break it to you, kiddo, but being your guardian means that it's my job to worry about you. Always, for the rest of our lives."

Davina slipped out of the car and leaned down to talk through the rolled down window. "I know," she assured him with a smile. "It's a job you're really good at, you know? And I am grateful, Marcel. I wouldn't even be alive now if it weren't for you." Someone farther behind in the drop-off queue honked their horn and she rolled her eyes. "Okay, we're holding up traffic so I've got to go. See you later?"

"Absolutely," Marcel promised, and then pulled away from the curb.

She stood there until his car vanished from view and then turned and started walking across campus to her first class, Global Studies with a focus on Latin America.

She slid into her seat a few minutes before the bell rang, and started pulling her notebooks out of her bag.

The guy sitting next to her on the right leaned over and flashed her a friendly smile. "Hey, Davina. How was your weekend?"

She smiled back. "Hi, Mark. It was okay," she answered. "Hung out at home, studied. You know, the usual. How about you?"

He nodded. "Pretty much the same. I originally had plans to go to a soccer game with my dad," he tacked on with an unhappy look, "but he ended up having to work at the precinct all through the weekend so that fell through."

Davina frowned, vaguely recalling that Mark's dad was some sort of detective. "How come he had to work the whole weekend? That's unusual, isn't it?"

Mark gave a shrug. "A little, I guess? All I know is that it's something to do with those new disappearances."

Davina's heart tripped in her chest. "Disappearances? What disappearances? Who's gone missing?"

"You haven't heard about it yet?" The girl in the seat in front of Davina twisted around with wide eyes. "Eight people have vanished in the last two weeks. No one knows what happened to them. The police are starting to suspect foul play."

"Who were they?" Davina asked, increasingly anxious even though she couldn't pinpoint an exact reason for it. "Anyone we knew?"

The girl, Bethany, shook her head, her bleached hair fluttering at the motion. "Nah, no one our age. From what I read in the paper, the ones who went missing weren't important or anything; no rich relations or anything to make them stand out in any way. Just average people."

"Everyone's important to someone," Mark interrupted. "Just because they were normal people doesn't mean they won't be missed."

Bethany chewed on her lower lip, looking remorseful. "Y-yeah," she agreed. "You know I didn't mean it like that, Mark, seriously. I just..look, those missing people weren't very social, you know? My mom said that they were all pretty reclusive, just kept their heads down and kept to themselves."

"So why would anyone even want to kidnap them in the first place," Davina finished for her, then swallowed hard because all this talk of abductions was bringing back some nasty memories, of blood and pain and magic and stumbling through the dark with desperation in her heart.

She shook her head and very deliberately flipped open her Global Studies notebook to review the most recent homework assignment. "Did anyone else do the extra credit questions on Paraguay?" she asked out loud, very pointedly changing the subject to something that wouldn't tip her into a PTSD fit in the middle of a classroom. "Because I wasn't quite clear on the events of the Chaco War after the 1933 ceasefire expired, and I wanted to see what someone else thought."

Bethany looked startled by the shift in topic but quickly pulled out her own binder. "Well, by the time the truce ended, Bolivia had rebuilt their army, right? But that Paraguayan general-"

"Hey, Davina, do you think your guardian knows anything about those disappearances?" Another boy on Mark's other side leaned forward to look at her as he spoke, interrupting Bethany as he did so. "He's friends with the town council or something, right?"

Davina fumbled with her pencil and nearly dropped it. "Er, something like that," she replied, because she could hardly say 'Well, he's actually a founding member of the Council of Twelve that governs the supernatural side of the city'. "I don't think Marcel knows anything about those missing people, though," she added. "He's been busy with his own work lately, and hasn't mentioned anything about it me." And he definitely would have let her know about it, if it had been brought it his attention.

Mark made an unhappy sound. "My dad says that the city leaders aren't taking the disappearances seriously; that's probably why Marcel hasn't heard anything about it yet." His expression brightened suddenly. "Hey, maybe you can ask him about it?" he asked Davina eagerly. "He's an important guy in New Orleans, right? If he starts talking to people about the disappearances or looking into it himself, then the city might take the cases more seriously and give my dad and the other detectives on it more funding and resources."

"I don't know," Davina said uncertainly. "I mean, I can mention it to him, but I don't know how much he could do to help." If it was just ordinary humans attacking other humans, it was technically out of the Council's jurisdiction; Marcel could lean on a few people to work harder on the case, but that was about it.

"Jut ask him about it, okay?" Mark looked at her plaintively. "Please?"

Davina rolled her eyes. "I'll see what I can do," she told him. "Now seriously, did you do the section on the Chaco War or not, because I could use a different perspective on these questions."

* * *

Darkness. That's all Kol had known, all he had seen since his death. There were echoes in the darkness, echoes of pain and loneliness and betrayal, and nothing should have been able hurt him, not here in the darkness (not when he was _already dead_ ), but those remnants somehow did.

He can remember the pain of dying, of that hateful stake piercing his chest, of the agonizing flames that had swept across his skin and through his entire body.

He can remember, in a vague and disjointed manner, how he'd felt so furious, so enraged, so...betrayed.

His siblings had been in on it, he'd been sure of it. Still _was_ sure of it, even now. Because even if they hadn't directly murdered him, they'd been complicit in the situation that had led to his death and that was just as bad, just as much a betrayal.

For all their promises of family forever and always, it was painfully laughable how quickly they'd always turned on each other. How quickly they'd always turned on _him_.

And they always had. Admittedly he'd been chaotic and bloodthirsty, perhaps reveling in it more than he ought to have, but the rest of them had hardly been much better, and yet somehow he'd always been the odd man out, the _bad_ one.

They'd always judged him and cast him aside and turned on him at the slightest provocation.

It was all he'd been able to think about, during all this time in the darkness.

Now, though...now something was changing.

The darkness was...shifting. No, that's wasn't right. It was _parting_ , like the water around the bow of a ship, and he was being tugged through it. To what or where he didn't know. He couldn't even fathom what could be pulling him through this darkness; he was dead, and very little could reach the afterlife and have any significant sort of impact.

Suddenly, he felt a distantly familiar magic wrap around him, cocooning him from the darkness and filling him with a peculiar feeling of warmth, his whole being prickling and tingling, like when a too-cold limb is warmed too quickly.

 _What's happening?_ he wondered, because he could recognize the feel of the magic around him but the familiarity of it was categorically impossible. Because she's just as dead as he is, and has been for years. _What is this-_

Before he could even finish framing his next thought, there was a sharp pull, and then it felt like he was on fire all over again, and being pulled in every direction all at once. Like someone was ripping apart his essence and soul and trying to work it into a vision of their own.

He's not sure how long it lasted, but after a time he felt himself, his soul or life force or whatever one might call it, being pulled at again, only this time he's not being dragged out of the darkness or twisted around.

This time he was being put into something else.

No, not something...into some _one_ else, and the idea was alarming to say the very least. Not only was it nigh-impossible magic, it was forbidden by almost every magical sect on the planet. Who would be so powerful and so bold as to even _attempt_ it?

And who the bloody hell would use such magic on _him_ specifically?

Before he could start compiling a list of who might be responsible (because there was no way that it was _her_ , it just couldn't be), there was a moment of sharp and biting cold, and he lost awareness for several moments, just...drifting in nothingness yet again. But then he was...back.

 _Back in more ways than one_ , he realized as he opens his eyes and was met with the sight of a young short-haired woman standing above him. A witch presumably, because he could feel the power thrumming in the air around her, could practically taste it as it flowed around them.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," she said, and her voice was foreign and unfamiliar but the _way_ she said it, the cadence of her words, the tone...it's uncannily familiar, but he's so disoriented he couldn't place who she reminds him of.

Of more immediate concern, however, is the fact that...

He was...alive?

 _No, I can't be._ It wasn't possible. And yet...

He blinked, and his vision cleared a bit, the blurriness from his sudden awakening going away gradually.

He took a deep breath, felt the inhale of air expand his lungs and ribs and then whoosh out as he exhaled shakily.

He sat up instinctively, innately uncomfortable just laying there with a strange witch leaning over him, then lifted up his hands and-

Blanched, because those were not his hands, thank you very much.

He stared down at fingers he did not recognize, and then carefully raised those fingers up to trace the features of his face.

He felt his nose, his lips, the line of his jaw...he went over his whole face, bit by bit.

It was nothing like the one he remembered, the one he's had for his entire life.

It's _not_ his face, which means...

This _body_ was not his.

"What is this?" he demanded of the witch, hating the way his voice sounded when it came out of his new throat. Not just that it shook and cracked, but the way that it _wasn't his voice_. Even the accent was different, and he didn't even know what to think of any of this, of being dragged from death and put into someone else's body. "Who are you, and what am I doing here?"

"Oh, my sweet son," the witch said, stepping forward to cup his face in her hands. "Don't be frightened; you're safe here with me, I promise."

He leaned back and away from her, lips curling in an instinctive snarl. "I'm only going to ask once more before I get nasty," he snapped. "Who the bloody hell are you?"

She tsked at him, looking vaguely disappointed. "Come now, Kol, don't you recognize your own mother?"

He was so startled by this proclamation that he instinctively leapt to his feet, only to collapse to the ground almost immediately because apparently his new body wasn't ready for that sort of fast movement. "What-" He swallowed hard, heart pounding in his chest as he struggled to find words. "What's happening," is what he finally managed, his voice rough and hoarse.

"I've brought you back," his mother said, her new face creasing in a smile as she knelt down beside him and tugged him back up onto the stone bench he'd bolted off of. "I couldn't just leave one of my sons dead and forgotten, could I? What sort of mother would I be if I did that?"

He just stared at her uncertainly, torn between hope and suspicion. Because as much as he would have liked to believe that her motives were as stated, he just couldn't trust in that. He'd been floating in the cold darkness of the afterlife for years, after all; why revive him now, if not for some reason of her own? And for that matter, how was _she_ even here? She'd been dead for much, much longer than him, after all.

"What do you want?" he asked, shifting away from her touch. "And what..." He lifted a hand and pressed it into his chest, feeling the beat of his borrowed heart. "What did you do? How is this-" He choked on the word 'possible' and instead settled for another strident, " _How?_ "

"A soul transference spell," she replied, giving a small self-satisfied smile. "It worked so well for me," she went on, indicating her own new body, "that I had hoped to duplicate the effects for you as well. And your brother Finn," she added almost absentmindedly. "The spellwork was complicated, as was acquiring bodies for the both of you, but the results speak for themselves."

"Finn's back as well?" Kol asked. "Where is he?"

"Not here," Esther said, waving a hand dismissively as if the subject was of little importance for the moment. "He's running an errand for me at the moment, but I'll be sure to tell him of your revival at the earliest opportunity."

Kol nodded automatically, before his mind circled back around to one of her earlier remarks. "How precisely," he asked, "did you acquire these bodies?"

She looked surprised by the question for a moment, like it wasn't one she'd expected from him, but then her expression smoothed out into something unreadable. "Does something like that truly matter, my son? You are alive again, and that is all that matters. And we're even in the city of New Orleans, no less! It's always been one of your favorite cities, has it not? You can even use magic again," she added, and there's something almost sly in her tone.

"I- _what?_ " he choked out, thrown for a loop yet again.

He almost can't believe what she's saying, but...he can _feel_ it there, the magic under his skin. It's a sensation he hasn't experienced in centuries upon centuries, not since his mother had first turned their whole family into vampires with her magic.

He'd always mourned and raged at the loss of his magic that the vampirism had caused, and now...

Now he had it again, that elemental force lurking under his skin and in his blood, the power threading its way throughout his very soul.

"The body I found for you was originally a powerful practitioner in their own right," his mother informed him. "Untried in many areas of magic, but with considerable potential."

Kol looked up at her and entirely by accident caught a glimpse of his reflection in the reflective glass window behind her. Brown hair, blue eyes, pale skin, high cheekbones... "Who was he?" Kol asked without really meaning to, the words just slipping out of their own volition.

Esther gave him that look again, like he was drifting from a prepared script and she didn't like it. "Does it matter? He's not important; that's your body now, not his."

Kol wanted to agree, but there was something nagging at the back of his mind. "I should know his name, at least," he said to his mother. "I can't very well go around introducing myself as Kol Mikaelson looking like this, can I?" he went on, rationalizing it. "That would draw too much attention. Better to use the name already associated with this face, to help forestall suspicion."

Eshter-in-a-teenage-body pursed her lips but nodded reluctantly. "I suppose that's true," she acknowledged. "His name was Kaleb. Kaleb Westphall. He was originally from Liverpool, from a long line of skilled witches."

"Liverpool, huh?" Kol took that tidbit of information and filed it away. "That's a bit far away. What was he doing here in New Orleans?"

"It doesn't matter," his mother snapped, tone growing impatient. "What matters is the here and now, and what we need to accomplish." She paused for a moment, a gleam of calculation in her eyes, and then spoke again. "There's something I need you to do for me, my sweet son."

He felt something like resignation wrap around his new heart. _Should've known there was a catch_ , he thought to himself, even as he opened his mouth and asked, "What do you need, Mother?"

She gave a grim smile. "It's to do with your other siblings," she told him. "And some of the witches they've allied themselves with."

* * *

 _A/N: Okay, so...that was the second full-length chapter, and also Kol's introduction into the Inevitable series._

 _I would totally appreciate any and all feedback, if you guys have a second to share your thoughts on the chapter. As mentioned, I struggled with this chapter a bit, so any input at all would be enormously helpful (especially since I'm still getting a feel for Kol as a character; this chapter was my first time writing him, so I'm curious to see what you all thought of it). That being said, I did have a fun time on this chapter (writer's block moments notwithstanding, of course), so I hope all of you enjoyed it as well! :)_


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